Messages

1

LaserBoy !!! / Re: Using Laserboy to convert ilda files for etherdream

« on: November 02, 2015, 07:10:52 pm »

I managed to get it playing the ilda files off the sd card,  not with the autoplay.txt  which is supposed to do it on bootup.  But by using puredata and sending osc messages to the etherdream.   

Now if only I could actually make an etherdream plugin for puredata I'd be set.  Have you looked into pure data? I did manage to make up a Lissajous generator for the laserboy using a bunch of oscilators.  Ran on the pi even.

2

LaserBoy !!! / Re: Using Laserboy to convert ilda files for etherdream

« on: October 30, 2015, 01:45:29 pm »

I had some files that were working, but they were only showing one channel, the red.   So at one point I did manage to export it properly.  So it does work, and I did manage to get it working with that maxwell program off photonlexicon.  Also the test programs work and get it displaying properly.
The etherdream is sooo poorly documented, I'm having to dig through code to find out how to use it.  Pretty shitty for a paid product. 
It's not usb, it's ethernet. 

I downloaded your newer laserboy with the chil effect but that didn't seem to work so far, although I'm not entirely sure that it's the files or the way I'm trying to choose the files to be played.  You can select them with osc, and there is a playlist file you can put on the sd card, which is essentially just osc commands.  But again, so poorly documented.

Anyway I'll try some more things tonite and post back some results.

Cheers

3

LaserBoy !!! / Re: 10 Years and counting!

« on: February 17, 2014, 07:21:35 pm »

Thanks for making it.

Is there anyway to make the menu text colours all the same, the rainbow effect can be hard on the eyes at times.

Do you have any video tutorials?  Still having some trouble grasping all the pallette functions.

4

DACs / Re: Problems calibrating a new laserboy DAC

« on: November 23, 2013, 11:14:37 am »

So are you saying with a balanced output soundcard no external, or limited, circuits are required?

I have an older prosonus firebox http://www.presonus.com/products/firebox
It's got 6 balanced outputs.  Runs over firewire and linux/windows/mac all are good.  Also it does 24bit/96khz.

I'd love to get that as a "backup"

As to limiting the slope of the curve, how would that represent in audio? an ADSR filter? with puredata I can easily do simple maths on the audio data too. seems like a good thing to put into puredata as the last chain.

It looks like puredata has no problems with multirack audio in it's sampler tables as long as it's less than 64 channels. I'm still working through the specifics.  You have to specify how many header bytes and data bytes and big or small indian.   Hopefully I can cue up predone sample loops from virtualboy and massage the data with some live midi controls..

5

DACs / Re: Problems calibrating a new laserboy DAC

« on: November 22, 2013, 09:29:57 pm »

Here's a simple example using pure data, I just hooked a separate oscillator object to each channel and played with the values.
http://youtu.be/UaZxmkm3sWo
 this is going to be real fun to experiment with, especially with some midi knobs and faders, or a wii chuck with some accelerometer data
And a multi sampler playback so I can cue patterns easier.
So many ideas.
  An arduino patch with some graphic feedback could be a neat aid in tuning, you could watch all levels at once.
 
 What about balanced sound cards? Is there some way to get around hacking soundcards?  This would be a "pro" option, ¼ patch cords and some big tuning knobs, or maybe even digital pots? Lots of places for "improvement" but I also find the analog/digital crossover of the existing tech quite amusing :p
I do love some of the patterns I was able to get with laserboy. For making clips it seems very powerful.  I definitely want to learn more.  What I'm really after is the ability to tweak in realtime which pure data should work great for.  I wish laserboy had a preview and realtime playback, or perhaps I'm missing something. 


As for any negative of sound cards DAC's it's greatly overridden by the freedoms of not being locked into softwares and ecosystems.  I don't know how else I could use laserboy/pure data/VLC/abelton live/openlase, a wii controller... The list is infinite


Oh and I'm still using those lm358, they might not fare as well when I start pushing it but so far so good.
That's another question I had about galvo's what's good for them? How hard can you push them? And what does that actually mean? Noise is generally a bad thing? Is there some way to limit the signals to them or should the drivers handle that?


Did I take the red pill or the blue pill, hey wait, there's a green pill in here too?


Sorry bad humour


Lots to learn in the realm of LASERS!


Thanks for my next great time waster =)

6

DACs / Re: Problems calibrating a new laserboy DAC

« on: November 22, 2013, 06:39:49 pm »

It's all good, I managed to get it all sorted.  I think it was a calibration issue.  Calibration feels like that circus act where you are spinning all those plates, and have to keep them all spinning.  It's very analogy  

I have full color and have my levels nicely calibrated.  Now onto the software side.

It occured to me though that I could use the program puredata and have some realtime feed control.  That might be a neat way to hack together a player program.  As a proof of concept I just hooked up a bunch of oscilators to the various outputs and sure enough it makes all sorts of nice lissajous patterns.  My next thing will be to hack together a little sample player so I can trigger the little sequences I make up with laserboy. Or hook in my midi controller so have some realtime control.   You can pretty much do anything with puredata.

The fun starts now.

7

DACs / Re: Problems calibrating a new laserboy DAC

« on: November 21, 2013, 07:49:46 pm »

I managed to get it mostly configured and driving the laser.  My green is still not working and I'm not sure if I have the colors gained properly, but the circle is a nice big circle and I did a little color test and it seemed to have gradients, just no green.

8

DACs / Re: Problems calibrating a new laserboy DAC

« on: November 21, 2013, 02:19:25 pm »

I found the problem.  Turns out some of the pads either wern't there or came off during soldering.  I did notice those boards didn't take up the solder as good as other ones I've soldered.  So after careful circuit tracing it was the x + y where the little traces come from the soundcard input to the first resistor's.  They were really small or perhaps some of the coating got over too much of the copper or I soldered too hot.

With a little scraping of the trace and an extra wire for good measure I managed to get around the problem.  You might want to inspect those little solder pads.

What voltage do you set the XY at once you're playing the circle test?  5V AC? 

The next part seems fine although I'm getting nothing on my blue channel out and intermittent  on the Intensity Channel on my multimeter.  What exactly does intensity do with an RGB diode projector?

 Is there a setting in laserboy where you tell it what type of projector you're exporting to?

Nils

9

LaserBoy !!! / Compiling Laserboy on OSX 10.9

« on: November 21, 2013, 09:46:11 am »

Hi James,

  I followed the instructions for installing on osx 10.8 but the compilation fails with this error.

Code: [Select]

In file included from ./LaserBoy_space.hpp:34:
./LaserBoy_frame_set.hpp:259:38: error: parameter of overloaded 'operator++' cannot have a default argument
    LaserBoy_frame& operator ++ (int = 0) //post
                                     ^
./LaserBoy_frame_set.hpp:272:38: error: parameter of overloaded 'operator--' cannot have a default argument
    LaserBoy_frame& operator -- (int = 0) // post

Any ideas?

10

DACs / Problems calibrating a new laserboy DAC

« on: November 21, 2013, 09:43:02 am »

Hi James, and other laserians.

I'm having some issues calibrating this dac.  After your help figuring it was one of the LM072 chips I replaced those with an LM358 (another dual op-amp) and tried to do calibration on it.  At least until I have time to go pick up the new chips.

I've managed to zero all the colour channels but when I check the X or Y I get +8.5V and -8.5V and nothing I do with the voltage offset seems to do anything.
This is still without a test signal from the soundcard.  I'm using the pins right on the IC's to check, so pin 1 for the xy and intensity and pin 7 for the color channels. Although the color and intensity channels testing on the jumpers yields the same numbers.

Any idea what's going on or where I should probe to see what's happening? It's not the actual chips as the color channels are behaving normally and swapping them around doesn't seem to change this annomaly. 

Nils